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Archive for April 2nd, 2006

Day laborers wait for work outside of a strip mall in Encinitas, Calif. on Saturday, April 1, 2006. At issue on the immigration controversy is a debate over a proposal that would legalize an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States and expand guest worker programs for an estimated 400,000 immigrants each year.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Sunday he wants a full Senate vote on an immigration bill this week and believes that urgent action is needed despite sharp divisions over whether proposed legislation would amount to amnesty.

“There are 3 million people every year coming across our borders illegally. We don’t know who they are; we don’t know what their intentions are. We absolutely must address it,” said Frist, R-Tenn. “I hope by Friday that we will have a bill on the floor that is comprehensive.”

The bill passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee is too accomodating and essentially creates an “amnesty” type track towards American citizenship. It is unacceptable and Republican Senators should filibuster its passage. Passage of this “poor” bill is worse than NO bill at all.

A chief sponsor of a House bill, meanwhile, also called on the Senate to avoid deadlock so lawmakers in both houses can start work on reaching a compromise “for our national security and our economic well-being.”

“No bill will end up being the worst of all possible worlds,” said Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “This will be tough, and it’s the toughest thing that I’ve done in 37 years in elective public office. But it is an important priority.”

Flap disagrees.

Passage of the Senate Judiciary Committee bill would give too much power to the House-Senate Conference Committee charged with working out differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill.

But, the limp wristed Republican Senators will sell out and pass some sort of bill by Friday.

Flap only hopes that Bill Frist names some soild conservative senators to the conference committee and NOT John McCain or Lindsey Graham.

Iran announced its second major new missile test within days, saying Sunday it has successfully fired a high-speed underwater missile capable of destroying huge warships and submarines.

The tests came during war games that Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards have been holding in the Gulf and the Arabian Sea since Friday at a time of increased tensions with the United States over Tehran’s nuclear program.

The Iranian-made underwater missile has a speed of 223 miles per hour, said Gen. Ali Fadavi, deputy head of the Revolutionary Guards’ Navy.

That would make it about three or four times faster than a torpedo and as fast as the world’s fastest known underwater missile, the Russian-made VA-111 Shkval, developed in 1995. It was not immediately known if the Iranian missile, which has not yet been named, was based on the Shkval.

“It has a very powerful warhead designed to hit big submarines. Even if enemy warship sensors identify the missile, no warship can escape from this missile because of its high speed,” Fadavi told state-run television.

It was not immediately clear whether the ship-fired missile can carry a nuclear warhead.

MORE “Winds of War” bloviations from Iran.

Does Iran and the Revolutionary Guard not understand that if a United States submarine or warship were attacked by Iran that United States nuclear arsenal would be unleashed against Iranian military installations – resulting in hundreds of thousands or millions of casualties?

The new weapon could raise concerns over Iran’s naval power in the Gulf, where during the war with Iraq in the 1980s Iranian forces attacked oil tankers from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, prompting a massive U.S. naval operation to protect them. The U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet is based on the tiny Arab island nation of Bahrain in the Gulf.

Cmdr. Jeff Breslau of the 5th Fleet said no special measures were taken by U.S. forces based on Bahrain in reaction to the Iranian war games, even after the latest missile test.

“They can conduct excercises whenever they want and they frequently do, just as we do. We conduct excercises throughout this region,” he told The Associated Press by telephone.

Iran has inferior military forces and would be making a grave mistake to take on the United States and its allies militarily.

Students react in Nantes, western France, as they watch French President Jacques Chirac ‘s television address on the contested government’s youth jobs law. Trade unions and students appeared more determined than ever to press ahead with strikes and demonstrations against a new youth jobs law despite a compromise plan by Chirac aimed at defusing the crisis

President Jacques Chirac signed a contested measure to promote jobs for youths into law on Sunday even though he has said it would be replaced by a modified version to defuse a crisis that has led to violent demonstrations and dealt France’s prime minister a major setback.

However, unions hoped that another round of strikes and demonstrations set for Tuesday would provide a still more powerful push to get the measure — in any form — withdrawn.

And who has the political winner been in this compromise proposal by Chirac?

Interior Minister and UMP Party President Nicolas Sarkozy.

French Government UMP party President Nicolas Sarkozy answers journalists’ questions after a meeting with French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin at the Matignon hotel in Paris. The opposition Socialist party called on the French to throw their weight behind a nationwide strike Tuesday after President Jacques Chirac failed to win support for modifications of an unpopular easy-hire, easy-fire law.

Chirac, in a television address Friday night, said he wanted a softer, revised law with two key modifications to replace the unpopular one, which Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has vigorously defended. Critics say Villepin should have shown more flexibility. Chirac said he signed the contested law out of respect, he said, for French institutions, noting that it had been passed by parliament and approved by the Constitutional Council. However, he asked that it not be applied.

Chirac’s double-barreled approach was a face-saving measure for Villepin, keeping the law alive, at least in theory, but widely seen as a rebuff of the prime minister. A decision announced Saturday to turn the writing of a second bill over to parliament — removing it from the hands of the government — was viewed as a further insult.

Villepin gets thrown out with the CPE and Sarkozy becomes the NEW heir to the Chirac presidency. True French politics. Ask Colin Powell.

The move to place the new bill in the hands of parliament put Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy — Villepin’s party rival — at center-stage in pulling the country out of the crisis. Sarkozy had said the law should be suspended. The ambitious interior minister hopes to be a presidential candidate in 2007 elections for the governing Union for a Popular Movement, or UMP, which he heads.

Watch for the unions to make a deal with Sarkozy on the modification of the CPE -notwithstandig that the law may be good for the French economy and social unrest brought about by high youth unemployment.

But, also watch for big protest demonstrations on Tuesday as the LEFT tries to put a nail into Villepin’s heart over CPE.